Carol Hylton, Administrator of Catholic Home Health Services of Broward and Miami-Dade, is the CHS Hero in many ways! Carol has been a real champion in reducing hospital readmissions for Medicare beneficiaries in our community. Over six years ago, she recognized a growing need in making meaningful inroads towards this effort and working through the FMQAI has become a driving force within CHS to build a community-based organization, bringing about a coalition with this common vision.

Carol has been part of the Catholic Health Services family since 1995, when she began her journey as assistant director of nursing at St. John’s Nursing Center at the CHS North Campus. Shortly thereafter, she transitioned to director of professional services at Villa Maria Health Care Services. In 1998 she was promoted to administrator of Catholic Home Health services of Miami-Dade and since 2005 she has been at the helm of the combined CHS home health agencies. Early 2013, Catholic Health Services announced that Catholic Health Care Transitions Services, Inc. has been approved by CMS as a Community–based Organization to provide care transition services aimed at reducing readmission rates to hospitals.

During Carol’s leadership at Catholic Home Health Services, the organization consistently ranked in the top 95th percentile among Medicare certified agencies for clinical outcomes and readmission rates. Home Health Compare scored the agencies as performing considerably better than state and national standards. Based on these achievements, Carol was selected to participate in the National Hospitalization Reduction Study conducted by Briggs, Fazzi & Associates and National Association for Home Care, where she shared best practices for reducing readmissions and improving care transitions with the steering committee.

“Thanks to the great success that Carol has had with CHCTS, Catholic Health Services is in a unique position, working directly with local participating hospitals on their patient discharge planning to help ensure that their patient’s transition to the next correct level of care is successful, avoiding readmission to the acute care hospital. Carol and her team’s commitment and accomplishments reflect very well on the Archdiocesan post-acute care system of services” says Joseph Catania, CEO of Catholic Health Services. We are pleased and proud that Carol Hylton won as this year’s South Florida Health Care hero.